Josephine

𝓔𝓹𝓲𝓼𝓸𝓭𝓮 24: 𝓤𝓹𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓼 𝓟𝓮𝓸𝓹𝓵𝓮, 𝓤𝓹𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓼!

May 08, 1971

It has gotten so much worse. Cochrane has become ill due to exposure, pneumonia to be precise. It appears like he will not recover. As the snow thaw across the land, the war still ravages the Canadian countryside. Sudbury is still barely under our control, Toronto was taken by Mackenzie after he ended the brutal siege there, Mississauga as well was captured. He intended on marching east to meet up with Marcus Dimakopoulos, who was ordered to march west and besiege Kingston. Then, their combined armies were to march on Montreal and Quebec and restore ground by mid-summer.

That was the plan anyway, until the Battles of Locolle and Noyan, in which his demoralized weary soldiers were annihilated and forced to retreat across the border. I ordered Mackenzie to hold fast and not to advance headlong without defined backup. The Thunder Bay Company, a nationalist partisan group in Manitoba was finally beaten, so that's a good advancement. More troops are heading east, while now over 100,000 troops are occupying the western territories, including Columbia.

This was what I was reading now, in the command's latest letters. It was exhausting frankly and I was just praying for something good to happen...

"God, am I the villain here?" I muttered, "Because I made a peaceful revolution impossible, I made a violent one inevitable,"

I glanced at the empty scotch bottle on the desk. Then the one on the floor. Actually the three on the floor. And the one on the mantle. Okay! So I may or may not have developed a bit of a problem with alcohol. But I'm not drunk! I quickly scrambled all the bottles away so nobody could see them and so I could hide my shame. A knock on the door to my office took me by surprise.

"Yes!?" I answered.

"Your majesty... King Vittorio is here to see you," The female behind the door replied.

Vittorio was back from Italy? Suddenly I was very happy.

"Send him in!" I shot through the door.

The door opened and Vittorio strode in, dressed in a gray suit with a black overcoat. I stood up and briskly approached him, my dress swishing around my ankles

"Vittorio! It is so good to see you finally!" I said as I embraced him.

"I have missed you ever so dearly Josephine,"

"I was wondering if you would ever return from Italy darling, life here has been so drab, especially during the cold winter months," I muttered to him.

"My government is finally secure, without opposition, so I decided to come back to America for some time with my beautiful wife,"

I giggled lightly.

"You still know how to tickle my ego don't you?" I asked him.

"Of course- you know, looking into your eyes, you look... weary, stressed... is everything alright?"

"Well leading the largest and most powerful empire in the world tends to place quite the strain on any healthy person... but it's not just that-"

"What is it?"

He pulled me away so our eyes were locked together. Seeing him, willing to hear me, let me talk, made me vulnerable. Any worries I had about him unfaithful or distant fled my mind.

"It-It's this bloody war!" I cried out, "It's stripped me mentally bare, thousands upon thousands of American young men die every day. 30,000 died from frostbite and exposure during the winter and they are so demoralized that we are worse off than we were ten months ago!"

He nodded.

"The rebels are cannibalistic barbarians who use Chinese made assault rifles who slaughter our men without consequence, they have anti-aircraft defenses which render our aircraft useless, our men outgunned almost nine to one, Nova Scotia is building a fleet that could rival the British! It's absolutely exhausting!" I sobbed out, "And here I am in the warmth and luxury of the palace, while they struggle to find something as basic as food!"